Day 22: Global Studies Midterm

It's tough going back for two days of class after 13 days of travel but I guess that's how Semester at Sea works.  For the most part I really am enjoying the classes.  I've mentioned it before but it's such a unique setting here with a "floating university."  I like the professor for Infectious Diseases a lot but the class isn't quite what I thought it would be.  There's some really interesting info but it is a lower division so it's presented at a fairly basic level and wasn't really designed for bio majors (even though I'm not alone).  On the other hand it's nice to have a pretty stress-free class.  The class I'm probably enjoying the most so far is Abnormal Psych.  She moves really fast but presents some interesting ideas about global mental health that augment the curriculum in the text.  There's a lot of opportunity to explore some different topics in papers and much of what we're going over is really interesting to apply to many of the experiences I've had over the past few years in the hospital working around psych patents in the ER.

Global studies is going well, the professor has a great sense of humor.  Since the class is designed around the voyage it's very eclectic and hard to find concrete study material.  We had our first midterm this evening and it was a little more difficult than everybody was expecting.  Since there are 750 students in the class it's all multiple choice and very detail oriented.  With the exception of a few questions that were pretty far out I think I did well.

During the Global Studies class time this morning we had Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez (a Democrat from CA) speak as an inter-port lecturer.  I have a lot of respect for her position but was not at all impressed by the topic and delivery of her talk today.  I don't have time to go into detail but Americans are often seen abroad as being arrogant, self-centered, etc and it doesn't help when our nation's leadership presents themselves and our policy in this manner.  It was interesting to hear her perspectives I can't help being a little disappointed.

It's exciting and weird to already have to think about Croatia.  I think this might be the first country to put me a little further out of the comfort zone as far as language, previous travel, currency, etc goes.  I've heard it's beautiful and am really excited for arrival the day after tomorrow.  I have a few things planned but will save those for tomorrow's post.  That's all for now, it's about time for the ever necessary late-night snack.